Essay:

          How linguistics may help in the interpretation of literary analysis of the     poem

           

“The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot

•                                      Introduction
•                                     Linguistics assistance in the interpretation of literary analysis of the poem
•                                     Regularities/ Parallelism
•                                      Irregularities/Deviation
•                               nn   Conclusion

Introduction

T. S. Eliot’s “Hallow Men” is one of the best example in which the linguistics elements assists greatly intended to get the better understanding of literary analysis. As we know that Stylistics help in the interpretation of literary analysis through Foregrounding (Regularities/Parallelism and Irregularities/Deviation). Hence, there are four levels of stylistic analysis regarding “The Hollow Men”:

a.     Graphology,

b.     Morphology,

c.      Phonology, and

d.     Lexicosyntax

          The elements under each level have been described below. The elements included in Graphological level are: Punctuation the marks used in writing to divide sentences and phrases are said to be punctuation marks. Foregrounding This device is used to highlight something in order to emphasize or get the reader’s attention. The elements included in Phonological level are: Rhyme as the rhyme is consisted in the identification of rhyming words of the last stressed vowel and of all the speech sounds following that vowel. Alliteration It deals with the repetition of the consonant sounds at the beginning of the words. Consonance It concerns with the repetition of the consonant sounds either at the middle or at the end of the words. Assonance The repetition of the vowels sounds is called assonance and Onomatopoeia.

         The elements included in morphological level are: Compounding, Affixation, Suffix, Prefix, Coinages, Ellipsis, Anaphora, and Oxymoron.

 The poem has been analyzed by the following levels of analysis:

Graphological Devices Bold Print The title of the poem is written in bold to show the effectiveness of the title in the poem. Spacing The poem is written in 5 sections and each section has divided into unrhymed stanzas. Repetition The word “men” is repeated 5 times, “kingdom” 9 times, “world” thrice, “ends” thrice, “hollow” thrice, and “stuffed” twice in the poem. The repetition of these words shows the shallowness in the poem that nothing is there left behind in the universe after world wars.

Punctuation Marks Full-stop (.) 8 full-stops are used in the poem.

Comma ( , ) There is the usage of 11 commas. Semi-colon ( ; ) Semi-colon is used once in the whole poem. Colon ( : ) Colon too like semi-colon is used once in the poem. Exclamation marks ( ! ) Exclamation mark is used once only in 1st part of the poem. Apostrophe ( ‘ ) Apostrophe is observed 4 times in the phrases given bellow:

“Rat’ feet”, “Rat’s coat”, “death’s other kingdom”, and “death’s twilight kingdom”.

Dash (--) Dashes are followed three times in this poem. Phonological Devices Rhyme There is no rhyme pattern in the poem.

Alliteration The Alliterated sounds include: /v/, /h/, /m/, /s/, /t/, /l/, /f/, /d/, /k/, /g/.

Consonance The Consonantal sounds comprise: /n/, /v/, /r/, /d/, /s/, /t/, /m/. Assonance The Assonant sounds consist on: /æ/, /a:/, /i/, /e/, /i:/, /a/, /ai/, /au etc. Onomatopoeia “prickly pear” Phonological devices are used to increase the musicality in the poem.

          Morphological Devices consists of Coinages “Paralyzed” is used as a coinage for a specific context to show the creative power of the poet and the emptiness of the world. This is used as an adjective while this cannot be used as an adjective. Affixation Suffix There is the usage of suffix in the words such as:

 “creation” – create+ ion

“falls” – fall+ s

“souls” – soul+ s

 “filled” – fill+ ed

Prefix

  It includes the following words such as:

 “unless” – un+ less and

 “reappear” – re+ appear

Compounding “sunlight”, “meaningless”, “headpiece” and “sightless” are used as compounding.

Lexico- syntactic Devices Paradox

“We are the hollow men

 We are the stuffed men”

 “Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

 Sightless, unless…”

 “We grope together/

Antonym “Hollow men” and “stuffed men”, “bang” and “whimper”, “voices” and “whisper”, “fade” and “distance”, “idea” and “reality”, “conception” and “creation”, “essence” and “descent”

 Oxymoron “Not with a bang but a whimper” “Shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion;”

 Litotes “Headpiece filled with straw Alas! / Our dried voices…”“…quiet and meaningless/ As wind in dry grass”.

Metaphor “Headpiece filled with straw” “There, the eyes are/ Sunlight on a broken column” “This is the dead land/ this is cactus land” “In this valley of dying stars/ in this hollow valley”.

Ellipses The words or phrases in parenthesis should be there to complete the sentences. (We are…) “Leaning together” (We are…) “Headpiece filled with straw…” (Our dried voices, when/We whisper together/Are quiet and meaningless…).

Shade without color, (rats’ feet over broken glass/In our dry cellar …ellipsis)

Paralyzed force, ( rats' feet over broken glass /In our dry cellar … ellipsis)

Parallelism “We are the hollow men/ We are the stuffed men” “Here we go round the prickly pear/ Prickly pear prickly pear/ Here we go round the prickly pear” “Between the idea/ And the reality/ Between the motion/ And the act/ Falls the Shadow” and parallel with “Between the conception/ And the creation/ Between the emotion/ And the response/ Falls the Shadow”.

“For Thine is…”, “For Thine is” and “For Thine is” are parallel to each other.

 “This is the way the world ends/ This is the way the world ends/ This is the way the world ends”

Parts of speech Adjectives “hollow”, “stuffed”, “dried”, “dry”, ”broken”, “direct”, “violent”, “fading”, “ deliberate”, “crossed”, “twilight”, “dead”, “ cactus”, “stone”, “Multifoliate” , “dying”, “perpetual”, “empty”. Prepositions Prepositions like: “at”, “in”, “of”, “on”, “to”, “it” and “with” are used in this poem.

  Moreover, Irregularities or Deviation is one of the most important aspects of Foregrounding and interpretations. These consists of Archaism, Obsolete words, Obsolete grammatical features ( it contains II-person pronouns= (Ye, Thou), Verbal endings = (e, st, e , th), Old negative and interrogative form without Auxiliary “ I know not”…, Functions of Archaism ( Grand, Middle, and the plain style), Routine licenses( Lexis(Aphesis, syncope, apocopy) and Texis=hyperbaton). The escape from banality, two meaning of creativity, and degrees of linguistic Audacity (Creative licences), Varieties of poetic licences:

          Realization

          Form

          Semantics

Meaning and significance:

          Beside these, there are Lexical deviation, grammatical deviation, Syntactic deviation, Graphalogical deviation, Phonological deviation, and Deviation of Dialect, Deviation of Registers and Deviation of Historical periods.

Patterns of Irregularity in “The Hollow Men”

Semantic Deviations: The researchers find an example of semantic deviation in line:

 “Or rat’s feet over broken glass”

              Apparently irrelevant and insignificant use of this clause adds confusion to potential interpretation of the reader. This ambiguity is produced due to change of register: instead of normal poetic register. This is an account of an extremely personal strange style of the writer.

Semantic deviation is noticed in these lines:

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

The adverb of place „there‟ in line is a deictic item used for „far‟. „There‟ is used within the same clause with another adverb of place „here‟, quite opposite in meaning as it is used for a near reference. The “eyes “mentioned as such are near and far simultaneously. Probably one could not find more semantic deviations in rest of the poem.

Graphological Deviations

Lines 29 and 30 together make a complete sentence. Here in line 30 graph logical deviation at the level of punctuation is noticed as the sentence boundary marker is absent:

Let me be no nearer

In death’s dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat’s coat, crow skin, crossed staves

Similarly at the end of line 32 a punctuation mark, colon (: ) is deliberately omitted by the poet. Again, in line 36 a dash (-) conveys the continuity of the theme of deliberate disguise‟ of line 32. The absence of sentence boundary marker at the end of line 38 is the extension of the message conveyed by dash (-) in line 36. These graphological deviations are not without purpose.

The absence of full stop (.) in line 30 intensifies the continuity of the theme of no nearness, no directedness in twilight kingdom. The omission of colon (: ) after deliberate disguise‟ promotes the fear of the ultimate vision.

The opening lines of Section III are graphologically deviant:

“This is the dead land

This is cactus land”

These syntactically and verbally parallel lines are without sentence boundary markers. Both the lines have simple sentence structure of SVC, hence complete and independent clauses. This absence of the full stops alludes to the absence of a proper spiritual system in this world where the stone images (line 41) and broken stone‟ (line 51) are connected with idolatrous worship.

Lines 45 – 49 show graphological foregrounding:

“Is it like this

In death’s other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

      The deliberate omission of colon (:) at the end of line 46 sharpens the theme of unreflecting love and care. It intensifies the sense of loneliness, void, emptiness and despair exactly at the moments of extreme desire Consider the lines:

“The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars”

In this hollow valley and the last four lines of The Hollow Men seem graph logically deviant:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world end

Not with a bang but with a whisper.

First three lines have the same syntactic structure: SVCOV. These are three sentences. Each sentence has two clauses: first clause (This is the way) while shifting its rank here can be considered Adverbial, as it answers the question, how the world ends?  These lines are graphologically deviant also. First two sentences are without sentence boundary markers and the third sentence has a colon (:) absent at the end of line 97. These graphological deviations refer to the free writing way of the writer where he combines different linguistic materials from different textual sources, all in a collage style.  

Moreover, there is not any vivid Archaism, Obsolete words, Obsolete grammatical features, Verbal endings, Old negative and interrogative form without Auxiliary “ I know not”…, Functions of Archaism ( Grand, Middle, and the plain style), Routine licenses Lexis and Taxis. The escape from banality, two meaning of creativity, and degrees of linguistic Audacity could be possible but it is not vividly shown.

CONCLUSION:

The irregularities of expression are overwhelmingly dominant in TS Eliot’s poems. The Hollow Men shows Eliot’s innovations of irregular patterns in typographical and punctuation practices. Parallelism of expression, Eliot’s preferred poetic feature, is beautifully employed to produce musicality and ceremoniousness. Eliot’s semantic and graphological poetic irregularities bring about the difference between the language of conventional literature and that of the modern experimental one. These deviations create desired imagery in the minds of the readers. All in all, "The Hollow Men" consists of five sections of varying lengths. The lines are generally short. Like many of Eliot's poems, this one has an epigraph at the beginning – and not just one epigraph, but two. Nor does Eliot use a strict meter like iambic pentameter, though he sometimes used regular meters in other poems. Nonetheless, with Eliot's deep knowledge of poetry traditions, we wouldn't be surprised if he were parodying some French or Italian poet – we just wouldn't be able to tell you who it was. Number of word varying almost in each line. Syllables have been used some time very similar while other quite different. Hence T.S Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” is one of the best example to know that how linguistic assists intended to understand the literary analysis of the poem.

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                                             References

A linguistic Guide to English Poetry by Geoffrey N. Leech

Crystal, D. (1997). A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd

Freeman, D.C. (1993). According to my bond: King Lear and re-cognition. In J. Weber (Ed.) the Stylistics Reader from Roman Jakobson to the Present. London: Arnold and http://www.languageinindia.com/